DUBAI – The U.S. ambassador to Iran mistakenly told the shah in 1953 that Britain's newly enthroned Queen Elizabeth II backed a plan to overthrow the country's elected prime minister and America maintained the fiction even after realizing the error, historians now say.
The revelation, based on U.S. diplomatic cables cited by the historians, shows how America has struggled even to this day to offer a full, unvarnished account of its actions in the coup that cemented Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s power and lit the fuse for Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.